{"id":207,"date":"2011-04-01T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T13:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=207"},"modified":"2011-04-01T13:40:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T13:40:00","slug":"friday-topspin-uno-dos-tres-catorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/01\/friday-topspin-uno-dos-tres-catorce\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Topspin: Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Semifinals in place: <\/em>By an unexpected route, yesterday’s two quarterfinals netting the predicted results. \u00a0Roger Federer<\/strong> played three lopsided games before Gilles Simon<\/strong> retired with a shoulder injury. \u00a0Rafael Nadal<\/strong> had to work much harder.<\/p>\n

Tomas Berdych<\/strong> pushed Nadal to three sets –undoubtedly the best the Czech has played this week, and the first time he has won a set against Nadal for years. \u00a0Berdych’s consistency with the serve has been something of an achilles heel of late, and he failed to land more than 55% of first serves during the match. \u00a0He was more successful on first serve points than Nadal was, but he just didn’t get enough of them.<\/p>\n

Semifinal #1: <\/em>At 1:00 EST today, Novak Djokovic<\/strong> takes on Mardy Fish<\/strong>. \u00a0The sportsbooks see this one as a foregone conclusion, giving Djokovic a 90% chance of winning. \u00a0My system is more conservative, setting the probability at about 80%. \u00a0That said, the oddsmakers have been more aggressive on almost all of Djokovic’s matches over the last few weeks, and that has worked out quite nicely for them.<\/p>\n

Fish has been a bit of an enigma to me this week. \u00a0There’s no doubting that he has scored two big wins, over Juan Martin del Potro<\/strong> and David Ferrer<\/strong>. \u00a0But I wasn’t convinced in either match that his opponent was playing his best; Fish didn’t beat the del Potro who went deep in Indian Wells, and the Ferrer of Wednesday’s second set didn’t look like a top 10 player at all.<\/p>\n

Fish’s forehand is still a weak spot, and both Ferrer and del Potro let him get away with half-hearted defense. \u00a0Maybe I’m not giving the American enough credit–perhaps it was his game that made his last two opponents look sub-standard. \u00a0Constant net-rushing can have that effect. \u00a0But I doubt it will have any such effect on Djokovic.<\/p>\n

Semifinal #2: <\/em>Then, at 7:00 EST, it’s Nadal and Federer. \u00a0Thanks to yesterday’s match, Nadal has worked harder to get here, but I don’t think that falls in Federer’s favor. \u00a0The Swiss has had a few easy matches, notably a 6-3 6-1 drubbing of Olivier Rochus<\/strong>. \u00a0Yet he hasn’t demonstrated that the holes in his game–namely, consistency from the baseline–have been remedied.<\/p>\n

Oddsmakers set this match at about 57\/43 in favor of Nadal; my system gives Federer the edge at 55\/45. \u00a0Their last two hard-court matchups–at last year’s finals, and at the 2009 Australian–have gone the distance. \u00a0I expect that this one will be decided in three sets as well.<\/p>\n

Barranquilla: <\/em>The most interesting challenger to this point is the tournament in Barranquilla, which I mentioned earlier in the week because Wayne Odesnik<\/strong> was in the draw. \u00a0The Odesnik storyline ended quickly, but that’s not all on offer. \u00a0As I noted yesterday, the tournament didn’t hand any of its wild cards to Colombians, and after two rounds, all of the local boys are gone. \u00a0That’s a disappointment, as Alejandro Falla<\/strong> was seeded fourth, and Robert Farah<\/strong> had a third-set tiebreak against Flavio Cipolla<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Instead, the event has been dominated by Argentines, five of whom are in the quarterfinals. \u00a0Notable among them is Martin Vassallo Arguello<\/strong>, a former top 50 player who had to qualify. \u00a0He beat top-seed Teymuraz Gabashvili<\/strong> in straight sets yesterday, and now he will face Cipolla in an attempt for his sixth-consecutive match win.<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Semifinals in place: By an unexpected route, yesterday’s two quarterfinals netting the predicted results. \u00a0Roger Federer played three lopsided games before Gilles Simon retired with a shoulder injury. \u00a0Rafael Nadal had to work much harder. Tomas Berdych pushed Nadal to three sets –undoubtedly the best the Czech has played this week, and the first time … Continue reading Friday Topspin: Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,24,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challengers","category-daily-recaps","category-miami"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}